Peyton Manning Did What We Do Everyday, Just in the Wrong Context

If you were anything like me watching Peyton Manning give his initial reaction to winning the Super Bowl on Sunday, your brain may have reacted like this to a particular statements he said:

"I want to go kiss my wife and my kids." (Good, he's a family man).

"I want to go hug my family." (Eli does need a hug, especially after that odd non-celebratory reaction on camera that sealed the game).

"I'm going to drink a lot of Budweiser tonight, Tracy, I promise you that."

To the last line, I like most figured it was a blatant paid for plug for a beer (that I personally don't touch unless it's the only thing in the cooler at your deck party). But the next day, Budweiser claimed they had no hand, no money exchange, and nothing to do with what Peyton said.

In the big picture, we are drowned in advertisements every day--in fact an hour of our day on average according to some studies is taken by ads. We are used to being marketed to whether we like the product or not. However, everyday there's a good chance we ourselves are marketing a product because we like it and think someone else may like it. Or we get asked about a product we're eating, hearing, seeing, wearing, or considering buying by someone, and we market it to someone else if we like it.

So really what Peyton did may have been what we do on an everyday basis. We state something great about a product and why it's a great choice for ourselves and possibly others. In fact at the Super Bowl party I was at, we tasted three or four craft beers, a product I do love, and talked about whether we liked each one or not and why. Many of us used a beer rating app called Untpped to grade each one....after kissing our significant other of course.

I don't know what it's like to be a football player or someone famous and probably never will. If you're as big as Peyton Manning, you deal with brands and endorsements because that's just part of doing business. You speak on their behalf and sell their product as well as yourself because "it's part of your lifestyle" (and income). I don't care that Peyton's a Budweiser guy, but the main issue I had with what Peyton said is that he said it in the context of other genuine statements about his family and God (which came after the Budweiser line). The family imagery made him seem like anyone could hang out with him, and then BAMM....Budweiser snuck on in there.

No one really talks like this everyday, which is why it came out to appear like another ad. It was not the right context. I'm not sure what the right context would have been--maybe just drinking a Bud in the locker room on camera--but I'm not the one to ask about that. I'll stick to my craft beers.